Citizen Ruth (1996)

CITIZEN RUTH  (1996)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Alexander Payne

    Laura Dern, Swoozie Kurtz, Mary Kay Place,

    Kurtwood Smith, Kelly Preston, M.C. Galney,

    Kenneth Mars, David Graf, Burt Reynolds

Laura Dern gives a fierce performance as Ruth Stoops, a chronically strung-out waste case who's already had four kids and finds out she's pregnant. About to be sentenced to jail for endangering the fetus through drug abuse - she'll huff anything she thinks will get her high - she becomes the focal point in a tug-of-war between an anti-abortion outfit called the Baby Savers and a pro-choice group. The Baby Savers claim to be all about love, except, of course, when anybody disagrees with them. The pro-choice folks are just as dogmatic, and conspicuously lacking in anything resembling a sense of humor. Ruth, who has a long history of making really bad decisions, doesn't see much hope either way. She'd rather be getting drunk or sniffing airplane glue. There's a bombs-away bluntness to a lot of this, and it'd be funnier if it didn't feel so true, but Ruth isn't a character you'll quickly forget. Like Paul Giamatti's forlorn schoolteacher in Payne's "The Holdovers", she makes a getaway at the end, and you'd like to think she'll move on to something better, even though you know the odds are against it. 

 

Bad Times At the El Royale (2018)

 

BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Drew Goddard

    Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson,

    Jon Hamm, Chris Hemsworth, Lewis Pullman,

    Cailee Spaeny, Nick Offerman, Shea Whigham

A handful of strangers check into a curiously empty hotel that literally straddles the Nevada/California state line. They've all got stories, but are any of them who they say they are, and will anybody live long enough to check out in the morning? That last question could go either way in a crooked, new-noir nightmare that, like the hotel of the title, doesn't really exist anywhere except in its own dreamworld universe. You can't tell what will happen there, ever, except that it'll be nothing you expect. "What is this? Some sort of pervert hotel?" a character asks, and it is, but that's just a side effect. The El Royale is really about its guests. The bugs and concealed cameras and two-way mirrors aren't the half of it. 

The Burning Sea (2021)

THE BURNING SEA  (2021)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: John Andreas Anderson 

    Kristine Kujath Thorp, Henrik Bjelland, Bjorn Floberg,

    Rolf Kristian Larsen, Anders Baasmo, Nils Elias Olsen,

    Anneke von der Lippe, Ane Skumsvoll, Christoffer Staib

A pulse-pounding eco-thriller from Norway, about a massive oil-rig disaster in the North Sea. More evidence that the Norwegians know how to do this stuff as well as anybody. The storytelling's efficient, the effects look good, and the human element never gets lost. Some of the same people who worked on "The Quake" and "The Wave" were responsible for this. 

Love and Science (1912)

 

LOVE AND SCIENCE  (1912)  ¢ ¢

    D: M.J. Roche

    Èmile Dehelly, Renée Sylvaire

An inventor has a falling out with his fiancée 

while trying to set up what looks like the world's 

first Zoom call. Cinematography saves the day. 

St. Ives (1976)

 

ST. IVES  (1976)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: J. Lee Thompson

    Charles Bronson, Jacqueline Bisset, John Houseman,

    Maximilian Schell, Harry Guardino, Harris Yulin,

    Dana Elcar, Michael Lerner, Elisha Cook Jr.,

    Daniel J. Travanti, Robert Englund, Jeff Goldblum

Charles Bronson plays a crime-reporter-turned-would-be-novelist whose book's not going anywhere, so he takes a job as go-between in a payoff involving some stolen journals. It gets way more complicated than that - the narrative lost me completely after an hour or so - but by then you kind of want to stick around just to find out what the hell is going on. The Los Angeles locations look appropriately gritty, and Bronson, as usual, is bulletproof.

Harris Yulin

(1937-2025)

Carry On Don't Lose Your Head (1967)

 

CARRY ON DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD  (1967)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Gerald Thomas

    Sidney James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey,

    Joan Sims, Jim Dale, Peter Butterworth, Dany Robin

In late 18th-century France, the mob is screaming for blood, heads are rolling off the guillotine, and a rogue agent called the Black Fingernail is giving the revolutionary authorities a lot of trouble. Frantically paced silliness, with the Carry On Gang cutting up all over the place. True to form, the characters have names like Citizen Bidet, Citizen Camembert, the Duc de Pommefrit and Sir Rodney Effing (with two "f"s). Also, Sid James with a lisp. That's Carry On.

Central Airport (1933)

 

CENTRAL AIRPORT  (1933)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: William Wellman

    Richard Barthelmess, Sally Ellers, Tom Brown,

    James Murray, Grant Mitchell, Claire McDowell

Pre-code melodrama about two brothers, both flyboys and both in love with the same girl. You won't lose any sleep over who she ends up with, but the plot's just an excuse to get the planes in the air. Director William Wellman, the World War One aviator who made "Wings", knows what to do after that.

Something Weird (1967)

 

SOMETHING WEIRD  (1967)  ¢ 1/2

    D: Herschell Gordon Lewis

    Tony McCabe, Elizabeth Lee, William Brooker,

    Mudite Arums, Ted Heil, Lawrence Wood

A psychic, a witch and a federal agent with LSD in his pocket all turn up in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where some murders are taking place. Jefferson, Wisconsin? Something weird, for sure. 

Blitz (2024)

 

BLITZ  (2024)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D: Steve McQueen

    Saoirse Ronan, Elliott Heffernan, Harris Dickinson,

    Benjamin Clémentine, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham

In 1940, with Hitler's bombs exploding all over London, a single mother sends her mixed-race son away from the city, hoping to keep him safe, and returns to her job in a munitions plant. The boy, played with watchful resilience by Elliott Heffernan, escapes into the countryside by jumping off a train, and embarks on a perilous journey, trying to get back home. Saoirse Ronan plays his mum. It's a look at wartime Britain you don't normally see, part "Hope and Glory" and part "Oliver Twist", casting a lens on street-level crime and racism that's ugly, to say the least. There are some stylish visual flourishes in McQueen's direction, and the pyrotechnics are some of the best ever. (The footage of firefighters struggling to corral a runaway hose while fighting an inferno is hair-raising.) The music's by Hans Zimmer.

Blind (2014)

 

BLIND  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Eskil Vogt

    Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Henrik Rafaelsen,

    Vera Vitali, Marius Kolbenstvedt

A woman who's lost her eyesight slips into a world of fantasy, and the lines between what's real and what she imagines get blurry. Some of this is comical. Some is disturbing. Some is a little of both. It's a case of paralyzing fear - agoraphobia and the nightmare of being suddenly blind, compounded by the fact that the woman's fantasy alter ego, who's dealing with the same issues, is way more happy and resilient than she is. Or she could just be crazy. Blind in more ways than one.

The Black Castle (1952)

 

THE BLACK CASTLE  (1952)  ¢ ¢ 1/2

    D:  Nathan Juran

    Richard Greene, Boris Karloff, Stephen McNally,

    Paula Corday, Lon Chaney, John Hoyt

This isn't exactly a horror movie. It's more like a suspense thriller with elements of horror, starring Richard Greene as a Brit who goes to the castle of a German count, hoping to track down a couple of old comrades who disappeared there. Greene gets to try out his Robin Hood skills in a swordfight. Stephen McNally hams it up as the evil, one-eyed count. Boris Karloff plays the castle physician, whose potions can cause narcolepsy or death. Chaney lumbers around as a mute henchman. A little talky, but worth a look.

Beverly of Graustark (1926)

 

BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK  (1926)  ¢ ¢ ¢

    D: Sidney Franklin

    Marion Davies, Antonio Moreno, Roy D'Arcy,

    Creighton Hale, Albert Gran, Paulette Duval

William Randolph Hearst's girlfriend plays a fun-loving college kid who returns  home just as her cousin's about to become the prince of one of those European countries that only exist in fairy tales and movies like this one. When he gets hurt in a skiing accident, falling off a cliff, she assumes his identity to keep him from losing the crown. So for most of the movie, y0u've got Marion posing as a boy in a gender-bent comedy that's tailor-made for what she could do on the screen. You can see why old man Hearst was crazy about her. The last few minutes were shot in two-strip Technicolor.

Screen Test / Take 21

 

Match the following movies with 

the actors who appeared in them:

                                      1. "Blue Chips"

                                      2. "Blue Ice"

                                      3. "Blue Jasmine"

                                      4. "Blue Hawaii"

                                      5. "Blue Collar"

                                      6. "Blue Steel"

                                      7. "Blue Thunder"

                                      8. "The Blue Dahlia"

                                      9. "The Blue Angel"

                                    10. "Kid Blue"

                                      a. Roy Scheider

                                      b. Michael Caine

                                      c. Marlene Dietrich

                                      d. Elvis Presley

                                      e. Jamie Lee Curtis

                                      f.  Alan Ladd

                                      g. Dennis Hopper

                                      h. Richard Pryor

                                      i.  Nick Nolte

                                      j.  Cate Blanchett

         Answers:

1-i / 2-b / 3-j / 4-d / 5-h / 6-e / 7-a / 8-f / 9-c / 10-g

Beat (2000)

 

BEAT  (2000)  ¢ ¢

    D: Gary Walkow

    Courtney Love, Kiefer Sutherland, Ron Livingston,

    Norman Reedus, Sam Trammell, Kyle Secor

In New York in 1944, a Columbia University student named Lucien Carr stabbed an obsessive, would-be lover named David Kammerer, killing him. In Mexico City in 1951, the writer William S. Burroughs shot his wife, Joan Vollmer, in the head with a pistol, playing a game of William Tell. She died. These two incidents became a part of the history and legend of the Beats, and "Beat" is a movie about them. At least, it's partly about them. A lot of it focuses on the dodgy, flirtatious relationship between Carr and Vollmer in Mexico (with Allen Ginsberg tagging along behind), while Bill's off with a boyfriend in Guatemala. It's mostly bits of conversation between smart, pretentious characters who might care more about each other if they didn't care so much about themselves. Kiefer Sutherland appropriates Burroughs' distinctive drawl but doesn't look anything like Burroughs, and Courtney Love looks even less like Joan Vollmer. Ron Livingston does look like a young Allen Ginsberg, but Allen doesn't get to do much here except mope around and gaze longingly at Joan and (especially) Lucien, played by Norman Reedus. Critical reaction to the Beats has always been mixed, but their impact on American culture in the years after the war can't be entirely dismissed, their art drawn directly from their drug-fueled, bohemian lives. Not much of that comes through in this movie. They don't even seem all that interesting.